My Essential Baking Tool: OXO Good Grips Pastry Scraper
Essential Kitchen Tools

Pastry scrapers really need their own infomercial. It slices! It dices! It cleans up gunked-on messes! I use mine for all of the above.

First and foremost, I use my scraper for bread baking. It cuts through big wads of dough cleanly and then helps to scoop them off the counter for shaping. For very wet and loose doughs, the scraper is essential for gently working with them without making an enormous mess of things. And nothing is better for portioning out rolls and bread sticks, transferring shaped dough to pans, and yes, scraping the flour gunk from the counter when I'm all done.

And then there's everything else. I use my scraper to cut pans of brownies and lasagna, to scoop up piles of chopped vegetables for the pot, lift cookies from the baking sheet, and so much more. Whenever I need a tool to lift, pry, scrape, or scoop, this is the tool for which I reach first.

The scraper I have is the great grand-daddy to this one:

• OXO Good Grips Pastry Scraper, $9.99 from Amazon

My father gave me this pastry scraper when he first taught me how to make artisan bread. Ten years later, it's still with me. Mauled, scratched, and worn: the scraper is still one of the most useful tools in my drawer.

(Image: Emma Christensen)

Comments (2)

I have the all-plastic version that Oxo seems to have discontinued, and I love it. I got it looking for a tool to make chocolate curls off a marble board without scratching the marble. It's great for that, but I find I use it a lot more than I'd ever have thought -- cutting or trimming dough, lifting cut cookies to the sheet, clearing from a cutting board or counter, scraping a bench or a pastry cloth... The plastic one can do pretty much everything the metal one can do except chop harder things, and it's kid-safe... and doesn't scratch marble. 8) Every single friend who has tried it wants one of their own.

I recently bought an off-brand bench scraper and I totally love it, especially because it is called the "Bash 'n' Chop."

You can see it here:

http://www.brittanypowell.com/home/bash-and-chop-my-new-bench-scraper/